( the business association has a point , this was wynne's decision to rush the minimum wage hike without any proper study or reasons , you can't blame some businesses for trying to find ways to deal with the extra costs )

January 4, 2018 8:05 pm Updated: January 4, 2018 8:09 pm

Premier Wynne to blame for Tim Hortons cutbacks, not franchise owners: small business group

By Rahul Kalvapalle
National Online Journalist Global News

The head of Canada’s largest small business association is taking Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to task after she lambasted the children of Tim Hortons’ billionaire co-founder for cutting back employee benefits at their Cobourg, Ont. location, in response to the province’s increased minimum wage.

On Thursday, Wynne said of Tim Hortons franchise owner Ron Joyce Jr. that “if Mr. Joyce wants to pick a fight, I urge him to pick it with me and not those working the pick-up window and service counter of his stores.”

Dan Kelly, head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), says the Wynne Liberals were repeatedly warned that increasing the minimum wage would hurt workers, but went ahead with the move anyway for purely political reasons.

“Business owners had asked for a full impact assessment of the minimum-wage change to determine what the net effect would be, [but] the government refused to allow that to happen,” Kelly told Global News.

“I don’t think they give a care in the world as to how this is going to affect the business community. All they cared about are the optics of this, to flex their credentials with union members in order to try and win the next election,” he continued.

“This is a completely crass political move, one that they knew — or had to know — would have some negative repercussions, especially in the short term.”

Kelly explained that the minimum-wage hike represents a massive increase in costs for businesses, and that the negative consequences on workers are inevitable.

“This is a huge increase in the payroll budget for every business that pays at or near the minimum wage… and so it has to come from somewhere. Businesses have to have some degree of profit, otherwise why would the business owners continue to exist and keep the business afloat at all?” he said.

WATCH: Effect of new minimum wage begin to surface

“Businesses have routinely looked at ways to reduce cost and increase prices where they can, and I’m sure it’s going to be a combination of those things that’s going to be the end result of this,” he added.

“But the majority of it will fall on the payroll budget and there’s only a few ways that that could happen — either a reduction in the number of jobs, the hours that they’re offering or the associated cost of labour, which are benefit programs or other perks that the employer may have offered in the past.”

Still, many Canadians took to Twitter to express disappointment and ire at Tim Hortons.

Among them was Niki Lundquist, a Whitby, Ont. labour lawyer who is set to run for the NDP in the June provincial elections.

Lundquist says she only tweeted to express her personal viewpoint, but that her remarks caught fire for a reason.

“I think it’s because it’s intuitive to people that there’s something fundamentally wrong with employers not taking steps sooner to remedy the situation of low-wage labour, and that when government steps in to intervene on their behalf, that the immediate response is to cut from workers as opposed to consider other ways that this cost can be managed,” Lundquist told Global News.

READ MORE: Cuts similar to some Ontario Tim Hortons locations could come to B.C., says analyst

Lundquist said that while she appreciates that business owners would need to take some measures to deal with the minimum-wage increase, she was “appalled” at what she says is the needless haste in passing the costs down to low-wage workers.

She said the increase in wages would have been offset by increased consumer spending on the part of workers, which in turn would benefit local businesses.

“The people that are getting these [wage] increases are people who are low-wage workers, who are known to spend a high proportion of their income locally,” she said. “So the idea that [businesses] are not going to reap any benefit — they’re not waiting to see if there’s any benefit.

“Their immediate response is to cut from workers, the very people whom the wage increase is supposed to help, the very people who have been lagging behind for decades because businesses didn’t do what they should have done all along.”

Lundquist said that while she has made a personal decision “to not give my consumer dollars to a company that’s downloading the costs onto the backs of workers,” she isn’t necessarily calling for a boycott, but she does want the owners to rethink their measure.

Many Canadians do seem to like the idea of a boycott however, with the hashtag #BoycottTimHortons trending nationally on Twitter on Thursday morning.

Kelly said he isn’t a fan of calls for a boycott because this would only serve to compound workers’ problems.

“Canadians need to understand that business owners, whether they’re part of a chain or purely independent, are going to have to address this cost,” he said.

“Even those that are sympathetic for a $15 minimum wage — and I understand why many would be sympathetic towards paying a $15 wage, or $14 now — would have to admit that having such a huge increase in such a short period of time, 32 per cent over 18 months, makes it impossible for any reasonable person to try and accommodate without some serious consequence.

“[Boycotting] will further hurt the very employees that they pretend to be sympathetic towards… they’re certainly not going to be helping those employees they pretend to care about.”

WATCH: Ontario passes labour reforms, hikes minimum wage

Play Video

Lundquist says it’s important to remember that the workers in question are some of the most vulnerable in the economy.

“We’re talking about the very lowest-wage workers in the economy, the people who are struggling to get by, and a lot of those are women and single parents,” she said. “These are not jobs that we’re talking about anymore for just teens. It’s a huge, vast number of people in the economy now who are forced into minimum-wage labour, and the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation.

“It’s so obscene that the response immediately — when there’s a shift to actually improve the lives of workers — is to put that cost back on workers so that they don’t see the benefit.

( according to reports , tim Horton's franchises are being told not to talk about the minimum wage hike even if its causing them financial trouble )

January 05, 2018

“Deeply ironic”: Wynne accuses small business owners of bullying workers

Sheila Gunn Reid
Rebel Host | The Gunn Show

In response to Ontario's massive $2.40 per hour minimum wage hike on January 1st, two Tim Hortons locations in Cobourg Ontario informed their employees that they would no longer be entitled to paid breaks and a number of other perks.

That has Premier Kathleen Wynne mad and name calling, and prompted this response:

“asking minimum wage workers to sign a pledge acknowledging that their breaks will now go unpaid or agree to receive only 8 hours of pay for a nine-hour day is not decent and it's not fair. It's the act of a bully”

What angers progressives like Wynne is that the owners of these two locations in Cobourg are Ron Joyce Jr. and his wife Jeri Horton-Joyce, the children of Tim Hortons co-founders Ron Joyce and Tim Horton, and they're married to each other.

It's a Canadian love story but who their parents are won't change the realities of an enormous new business expense dumped on them and dozens of other Tims owners who are making the same tough cuts.

Wynne also told reporters that if the heirs to Tim Hortons opposed her government's decision to raise the minimum wage, they should have taken it up with her.

But small business owners HAVE been taking it up with her, warning for months that an arbitrary minimum wage hike would cause strain on their businesses resulting in reduced hours and perks.

Wynne’s keen business sense drove Ontario to be the most indebted sub sovereign government on the planet. She's no coffee industry analyst, that’s for sure.

Besides, even if they wanted to take it up with Wynne, according to Great White North Franchisee Association – the trade body representing over one thousand Tim Hortons owners -- they're being told not to talk about the challenges the minimum wage is putting on their businesses and they're being threatened with retribution from their own head office if they do.

What a great irony.

Wynne used the extreme power of the legislature to arbitrarily reach into someone else's business to do whatever she wants with it after ignoring warnings from small business, and she’s calling someone else a bully?

( the star has come out with an article about why a higher minimum wage is good , I don't disagree that some workers need a so called "living wage " or they can't survive but many minimum wage jobs are only entry level , temporary or for students . these people aren't paying for a mortgage or feeding a family , there is a reason why there is entry level jobs that pay less or why servers at restaurants make less in pay but more in tips )

Why these small business owners are embracing the minimum wage boost

Two business owners in different fields explain why a living wage is good for business.

Gilleen Witkowski and Colin Pearce are owners of Walk My Dog Toronto. They are business owners who support the increase in minimum wage.

By Sara MojtehedzadehWork and Wealth Reporter

Mon., Jan. 8, 2018

On the face of it, business owners Gilleen Witkowski and Damin Starr have little inommon: a millennial entrepreneur with a downtown Toronto dog walking outfit, and a father-of-six at the helm of a Niagara-based metal parts processing facility.

But despite divergent journeys, they say they’ve both arrived at the same conclusion: a living wage is good for business.

In the wake of a controversial backlash to the province’s minimum wage bump, up from $11.60 to $14 an hour this January, Witkowski and Starr are urging fellow entrepreneurs to embrace what they see as much needed change. And they believe many are.

“I think some of the positive voices have been drowned out by some of the larger voices,” Witkowski said.

Witkowski herself is no stranger to precarious work, part of the reason she says paying her employees $15 an hour was non-negotiable when she started her dog-walking and pet services businesses two years ago.

“I’m a millennial and my whole working life, the minimum wage was frozen or close to frozen. That’s my context,” says the 32-year-old co-founder of Walk My Dog.

“I’ve seen people attempt and fail to make a living on just minimum wage, and watched people struggle in the new economy to get good jobs with their degrees.”

Her decent work strategy, she says, has proved a success.

“If people are wrong, you fight them,” says James Pickersgill, whose Facebook post of a picture of a letter to Tim's employees in Cobourg has gone viral. "The question is, will the Joyces reverse their decision? I don’t know that they’re brave enough to do that.”

Even before the latest minimum-wage meltdown, Tim Hortons was a brand in crisis

“I totally understand the concerns around cost because I am a small business now. But I think the benefits outweigh the cost. The loyalty I’ve seen from my staff is incredible.”

“It’s doing the right thing, but there are tangible benefits and that is my low turnover,” she added.

For Starr, the road has been longer. He cut his teeth working for a steel manufacturing company run by his father, who he describes as a hard-nosed businessman.

“I became sort of conditioned to believe the right way to run business is looking at your bottom line,” he said.

For years — including after he started his own company, PreLine Processing — he followed suit, leaning heavily on minimum wage temp agency workers.

The epiphany, he says, came when he returned from Toronto having secured a $40,000 contract, only to find $10,000 worth of mistakes on his shop floor in Lincoln, Ont.

“I was working all sorts of extra hours because I had inexperienced workers making mistakes,” he says. “I’m not blaming the workers. I blame myself. What a miserable environment I had.”

Starr says it prompted a series of frank conversations with his permanent employees.

“I sat down with them and said, as a working person, what is it you need?”

In response, he dumped temp agencies and ramped up wages. Together with his employees, he calculated a living wage for his region — which in 2012, he figured to be $15 an hour.

“We decided that you couldn’t work for us for less,” he said, noting his base rate is now more than $17 an hour.

“People were thrilled with the fact that there was a commitment to ensure that nobody wouldn’t be able to pay their bills at the end of the day,” he added.

“Something occurred during that time that made me proud of the business and proud of the staff.”

During the province’s sweeping review of its employment and labour laws, originally initiated in 2015, some employer associations raised concerns about the impact of regulatory updates on already-squeezed bottom lines.

“Employment standards, rules and regulations impact the vast majority of businesses with employees in the province. Any changes to these policies would have widespread implications for Ontario’s small businesses,” the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s 2016 submission to the review says.

“We continue to be gravely concerned by the language … suggesting that Ontario requires a more rigid legislative framework around employment standards.”

Despite her sympathy for fellow small businesses, Witkowski says she’s disappointed at what she sees as a lack of leadership from large corporations in particular.

“Here I am, this tiny business trying to grow, trying to make it work … and then you have the larger food companies who I don’t think care about the well being of their staff. They have an axe to grind and I think that’s really inappropriate,” she said.

“We’re not changing economics here, we’re just catching up with what minimum wage would have been if there hadn’t been a freeze,” she added, referring to two government-mandated minimum wage freezes between 1995 and 2003 and between 2010 and 2014.

For Starr, the minimum wage backlash highlights the perils of what he sees as short-term thinking.

“I have different customers then I had (before). Those that kept asking me for discounting, discounting, discounting, the answer was no. You will get it at the price that it costs based on a fair and reasonable workplace. And if you don’t like it, then go somewhere else,” he said.

“I think the recovery shouldn’t be on the backs of workers. It should be a shared responsibility.”

You have instituted policy which will seemingly artificially create a receding employment figure (which may or may not be counteracted by organic growth in the market)

You have also artificially created additional inflation of goods and services as a result of not just the wage hike but the cap and trade system which generated nearly 2b dollars for the Province in 2017.

The cost of everything has increased not as a result of "Business being Business" but Government policy that has created this scenario.

Instituting this sort of increase on the cost of doing business in Ontario is somewhat insulated by the fact that the dollar is still weak compared to the US dollar and that unemployment is rather low at the moment.

The challenge is if one or both of those factors start to change you find yourself in a situation where you created an accelerator to your economic decline

The most frustrating aspect of the manner in which those who have passed costs onto the consumer or their employees is an utter lack of understanding that not all business is effected the same way by the changes.

The cost of a good or service generally speaking is determined by Labour Cost, Cost of Goods, and Overhead (In a vacuum).

If your industry relies on general and unskilled labour as the bulk of your expense;
Landscaping, General Agriculture, Food Service, and "General Labourers" you have just been served up an 18% increase in the cost of Labour increasing to an 23% increase on your cost of Labour in just a years time compared to December 31st 2017.

If Labour is the bulk of your expense that is a staggering hit year over year;
Selling it as "a few dollars" is an interesting exercise but at the end of the day if your industry relied heavily on Labour making less than 15 an hour you taking in a worse case a hit in excess of 20%.

If coffee increased 20% overnight you would see an increase when you ordered your double double, When Oil spikes on the market, you feel that impact next time you tank up, and if steel increased nearly 20% overnight the cost of your next car would likely be impacted.

I have no issue with business adjusting either their cost of goods or benefits in order to address an impact that was deployed unnecessarily quickly because of a pending election. The policy would have been palatable if at a minimum business was given the time needed to pivot and plan, a massive increase from one day to the next is the flaw in policy.

What is going to prove interesting is we are at a point where Government Revenue is at record levels and Unemployment is very low, if some industries are having challenges in this economic climate the slightest slowing may cause tremendous pain down the line.

Last edited by cosmostein on Wed Jan 10, 2018 10:17 am; edited 1 time in total

( the labour minister is now telling businesses they should raise prices if there having a problem with the higher wage , so now wynne's minimum wage policy is starting to appear that its not revenue neutral and will be consumers paying the higher wages )

This policy has already failed if Wynne expected to see a big rush of support to the Liberals on the basis of this bit of pandering. Every comment I hear in rural Ontario is negative.

Facebook had a little entry that calculated the wages of a full-time minimum wage employee after taxes, under the old wage rate and the new. Ican hardly believe the numbers myself, so I don't stand behind them, but they seem to be accurate to the penny.

Under the old system, 40 x $11.40 = $456.00, and the takehome pay would $307.81
Under the new system, 40 x $14.00 = $560.00, and the takehome pay would be $359.78

In other words, the increase, in the hands of the worker, would be $51.97 a week. But the actual difference in wages paid would be 40 x $2.60 = $104.

Which means the increase in wages would actually benefit the different layers of government a tad more than they would the employee! The employee would net $51.97 a week while the different levels of government would take $104 - $51.97 = $52.03!!!

We now live in a society where a minimum wage employee is in the 50% bracket for every additional dollar (s)he earns!

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne addresses questions from the public during a town hall meeting in Toronto on Monday, Nov. 20, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

By Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre

When a doctor taps your knee, your leg kicks out on reflex. In other words, applying pressure in a certain way elicits a predictable response. Similarly, recent increases in the minimum wage in Ontario and elsewhere put pressure on businesses that responded in predictable ways.

For example, in the wake of Ontario’s recent 21% increase in the minimum wage, from $11.60 to $14, news headlines report that businesses have responded in numerous ways that are easily predicted by economic theory and evidence. Unfortunately, these responses hurt many low-wage workers — the very people the minimum wage is meant to help.

For instance, businesses have responded by reducing the amount of labour that they employ by reducing staff or cutting hours. But no one should be surprised. When the cost for low-skilled labour artificially increases (in this case, by government mandate) without a commensurate increase in worker productivity, businesses will inevitably respond by finding ways to reduce labour costs or pass costs on to customers.

In other words, when the price of something rises with no quality improvement, people tend to buy less of it. This is true for business owners and their expenses, just like consumers of goods and services.

Unfortunately, job losses will not be limited to a few isolated cases but, as predicted recently by the Bank of Canada, will be more widespread. Indeed, it is not hard to predict job losses given that multiple Canadian research studies into previous minimum wage increases consistently show that businesses respond by reducing their demand for labour.

The problem is that low-skilled workers bear the brunt of the negative consequences. With a higher minimum wage, businesses are more likely to prefer more experienced workers with proven track records and less likely to give opportunities to lower-skilled less-experienced workers. Consequently, more vulnerable workers, particularly young workers, are most likely to lose their jobs or have difficulty finding a new one.

One way businesses reduce staff is by increasing automation — such as self-serve checkouts. Increased automation will disproportionately harm low-skilled workers. Jobs that generally involve routine or repetitive tasks are particularly vulnerable to automation.

There are other ways that businesses respond to a minimum wage hike that can negatively affect low-wage workers who are fortunate to keep their jobs. For instance, some businesses are reducing employee benefits and cutting the number of hours available for work.

In some cases, the increase in the minimum hourly wage may not be enough to offset the reduction in the number of hours worked. According to a study by Washington researchers, this is precisely what happened in response to a recent minimum wage increase in Seattle. The study found that overall earnings (number of hours multiplied by the wage rate) of low-wage workers in the city declined.

As an alternative to reducing labour costs, some businesses have also responded by passing costs on to consumers through higher prices. But even this response from business will adversely effect low-skilled workers. After all, workers who earn a low wage are also least able to afford higher prices.

And finally, businesses are responding by closing down, unable to bear the increased labour costs and leading to fewer opportunities for low-skilled workers.

When you knock a knee, the leg jerks. And when government mandates higher labour costs, businesses respond, often in ways that make many low-skilled workers worse off. Policymakers in Ontario and across Canada should understand these realities before raising the minimum wage.

Charles Lammam is director of fiscal studies and Hugh MacIntyre is senior policy analyst at the independent non-partisan Fraser Institute.

( the labour minister is now telling businesses they should raise prices if there having a problem with the higher wage , so now wynne's minimum wage policy is starting to appear that its not revenue neutral and will be consumers paying the higher wages )

Much like the Green Energy Act, HST, Cap and Trade, and now the Minimum Wage hike this becomes a "tax on everything".

Yet again it becomes a tax on everything after being sold as a minimal impact change,
but what is seemingly par for the course with so many OLP policies it will will generate additional government revenue.

Additional revenue at a time when Ontario Government Revenue is at a record high.

To the Ministers credit, at least he is being honest with the situation.

Its a nice departure from Ann Hoggarth's utter disconnect with reality a few weeks ago

( the labour minister is now telling businesses they should raise prices if there having a problem with the higher wage , so now wynne's minimum wage policy is starting to appear that its not revenue neutral and will be consumers paying the higher wages )

Much like the Green Energy Act, HST, Cap and Trade, and now the Minimum Wage hike this becomes a "tax on everything".

Yet again it becomes a tax on everything after being sold as a minimal impact change,
but what is seemingly par for the course with so many OLP policies it will will generate additional government revenue.

Additional revenue at a time when Ontario Government Revenue is at a record high.

To the Ministers credit, at least he is being honest with the situation.

Its a nice departure from Ann Hoggarth's utter disconnect with reality a few weeks ago

many major chains are quietly raising prices , found that out at subway at lunch , my normally inexpensive sub the BLT , which had been $3.99 , is suddenly now $4.89 , an increase of 90 cents , so with tax that's likely costing me an extra $1

( I asked the lady working about it and she confirmed to me they had raised many prices cause of the minimum wage although it wasn't posted anywhere in the store )

so if I were t o buy 4 subs a month , over a year that's an extra $50 out of my pocket , consumers are the ones paying for this policy

my math is wrong cause at $ 3.99 I wouldn't of paid tax on this sub previously as food items under $4 aren't taxed in Ontario , so I have to pay an extra 90 cents for the sub and an extra 64 cents in tax

meaning I'm losing $1.50 per sub compared to what I was paying last year

so the government is the big winner here , as they get tax revenue on something that previously was exempt

basically the minimum wage is taking away a lot of the bargains that were out there , forcing businesses to raise prices

in some cases it makes the old business model , which was pay low wages and sell products at low prices unrealistic . it just doesn't make business sense anymore

You mentioned " many major chains are quietly raising prices ", any idea where I can find these places , or get their names ?

I get that this is unpopular with some business owners. Some of it is because these folks want no cut in their profits, and the like.

But for the ones out front, Tim Hortons, it is a the wrong place to be. Franchise holders have been griping for eons how RBI and previous owners have kept raising costs to franchisees on everything and under their agrrements HAVE to buy everything from Tims parents.

And for the billionaire son/daughter to bitch about this is kind of rich.

And stupid, really stupid. Speak out all the while sunning ona beach at your mansion.

You mentioned " many major chains are quietly raising prices ", any idea where I can find these places , or get their names ?

I get that this is unpopular with some business owners. Some of it is because these folks want no cut in their profits, and the like.

But for the ones out front, Tim Hortons, it is a the wrong place to be. Franchise holders have been griping for eons how RBI and previous owners have kept raising costs to franchisees on everything and under their agrrements HAVE to buy everything from Tims parents.

And for the billionaire son/daughter to bitch about this is kind of rich.

And stupid, really stupid. Speak out all the while sunning ona beach at your mansion.

Wonderful optics there bozo ! .

The BLT has never been the sub of the day , that special and price of $3.99 is still in place , its stuiped cause this sub likely costs them way less to make than any of the subs listed as a sub of the day

seem to recall it was listed on the menu as a local favorite ? or something , you can definitely order a BLT at subway here , I did many times during the summer as it was a lighter sub to eat and cheaper

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